Misericordia
by she blushes in ink
Summary: What would you give fate for your soul mate? A bored Voldemort, two decades into ruling a Dark Europe, is contacted by the tired fates, and learns that Harry Potter was his – is his destiny. They send him back to Voldemort with a single condition: if he wishes to keep his twin flame, he must destroy his empire, the Dark Kingdom Harry Potter died to make. LVHP, AU
1. Prologue pt I

**Misericordia**

**Summary:** What would you give fate for your true salvation, your soul mate? A bored Voldemort, two decades into ruling a Dark Europe, is contacted by the tired fates, and learns that Harry Potter, the bones of whom his empire is built upon, was his – _is _his destiny. They send him back to Voldemort with a single condition: if he wishes to keep his twin flame, he must destroy his empire, the Dark Kingdom Harry Potter died to make.

**Warnings:** LVHP; other pairings have yet to be determined. Homosexual relationships. AU. Fate. Liberties with characterisation. HP, two decades into the future of a Voldemort wins world.

M because I am paranoid.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I wish to; I have no desire to be hunted down by lawyers, or worse, Voldemort.

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**Prologue: Eternity**

**I**n his hands, Voldemort holds eternity. He is, after all, invincible, and this shows; he rules the world with the sort of fearless command only an invincible man can do.

But he is also bored in the way only an invincible man can manage.

He forgets the difference between content and resigned, between clear and blank. He carries a dictionary with him, now, something he never had to do even as a student; he could never afford one and he was a genius, a genius with no need for a dictionary.

And he has the definitions memorized and committed to memory. He knows the typeface of the words, sees that little spot where a comma should be but isn't, could replicate every dip and line of the print and reword the definitions a thousand different ways.

He is, after all, a genius.

Still, he can't help but feel that the bloody editors made a mistake in listing blank and clear as synonyms of each other. Just as he can't help being mad that all those years ago, he let an ostensible agent of fate write his path for him, tell him that a boy just like himself was born. A mirror, he had thought; a threat, a rising Dark Lord.

Now, so many years later, Voldemort knows he does not need fate. He is a Dark Lord, by Salazar, and has transcended death; he regrets the child lost so many years ago, dead at his hand.

It is silly, that now Voldemort thinks of the triumph upon which his kingdom is founded. But now he has all the time in the world – no, everything in the world, and cannot find anything better to do with it than reflect.

Voldemort sweeps out of his palace intently, a blaze of black; he turns sharply into his elf-maintained gardens, which are ablaze with life. Everything in the garden is the bright unnatural green of the Avada Kedavra; and as Voldemort tells himself constantly, his favourite colour has nothing to do with Harry Potter and everything to do with power.

A shimmering green ripples like sealight across the glossy white surface of the gardenias in the sunlight; he catches the gardenia closest to the fence with his fingers, the one on the bush that will never rot, and walks through the archway that cuts itself through the boxwoods.

He steps over ivy that has sprawled out onto the path with a fluidity that speaks to how often he has walked this walk, and he closes the archway with a careless wave of his yew wand, and advances to the centre of the wide space. The shrubbery that boxes the area in looms tall above him and his nose is filled with the sweet but not cloying scent of white-green roses.

But he thinks of one thing, and one thing only. His eyes don't catch anything in the wonderful garden as he murmurs in snake's tongue, "_Harry Potter_."

And suddenly, before him, resting on a mound made of earth, is Harry Potter's body.

He has always told his followers that he burned the body of his enemy and burned the ashes 'till the Boy-Who-Lived was nothing but a ghost, something that would fade into legend and stain the yellowing pages of history with a spectre of himself.

But the truth is that Voldemort could never quite find it in himself to desecrate the shell of a star, or to let time take it.

He reaches out a reverent hand to ghost over the peaceful face. He has wrapped the body in an incredible number of stasis spells, but every time the Dark Lord looks at him, he is newly amazed.

He sees Harry Potter in his dreams when he snatches sleep from the cold, clammy fingers of insomnia. Voldemort never forgets or oversees anything; but he can admit that it is only now that he can fully appreciate the flash of fire that sparked in Harry's eyes as he looked to the Dark Lord, awaiting his death.

Every night (he has ceased to measure days in hours; a night is a night if he sleeps) he watches the boy die again, sees how the Avada Kedavra lit up his eyes like supernovas as he laughed a laugh that was the rest of the breath in him, all of the fight and fire, and fell. How his eyes were burning burning and the way the newly dead boy's eyes fizzled through his eyelids and seared Voldemort's fingers as Voldemort pulled them over his eyes and asked Narcissa Malfoy to take the body away because in death Harry Potter was almost as beautiful and unnerving as he had been in life.

But his laughter rang out and shook the trees like a strong silver wind; he could not order Narcissa Malfoy to drag that away. The lingering laughter was a collection of everything in the life of Harry Potter – love, light, friendship.

But in its echoes the Dark Lord could hear the whisper of a warped laugh, a cobweb on which was pearled woe, death, glory that died unborn.

And he understood, in that moment, that Harry Potter was some painful mixture of what reflected in his crystalline mirth and the shadow that fell upon it; that woe and love and death and light had clasped together and formed the Boy Who Lived Laughing and Died Laughing where they touched each other.

He comes here every patch of blank time he can find, driven to this place by his dreams (and only his dreams, he tells himself firmly. Only his dreams.) And as he does during his every visit, he brushes Harry's eyelid up, and the other, and like this, the Dark Lord can believe that the boy is alive. Harry's eyes are still the supernatural bright they were when he died, clear – not blank, _clear _– and green flecked ebony.

Voldemort has seen that strange pattern crop up in the variegation of his hostas. He tells himself it's a coincidence, easily writes off the hours spent in dark rooms hunched over parchment after parchment filled with botanical genetics – which is not so hard to do when you are a victim of an empty eternity.

His newfound obsession with a long dead boy is easier to accept when he sits besides Harry's body; for the thought of him being obsessed is easier to grasp, like the silly Muggle idea of a heaven, and he can pretend to be such a fool here, where only Harry can see him.

He traces Harry's scar with a finger, for the moment content to accept that it is a gesture hopelessly reverent, demonstrating how neatly ensorcelled he is, by a boy who was godly in life and carved into a villain in death. The burning contempt Voldemort once held died with this boy, when the body was absent of a soul and all the triumph that should have been there was not.

He caresses his finger across the crest of Harry's bow lip. When he is not busy dreaming of Harry's death, he dreams of Harry's lips, which is strange for a man who no longer has libido.

Voldemort was born without a romantic bone in his body, but he was born a man, yes; even so, he stopped visiting others' beds completely – for he would never share his own – decades ago.

He tells himself it's just not appealing to him anymore, that he doesn't have time, that nobody (_alive_, anyway) is worthy.

As he finds it, his reasons seem to follow a gradient; his first statement is a no-truth, his second is a half-truth and the last statement is a full-truth. (He's begun to think of things in terms of levels of truth rather than levels of deceit.)

But he dreams of taking fiery, lovely Harry Potter to bed – _his _bed – and spreading his pale, lithe Seeker's body on his Slytherin green silk sheets, of _kissing _his mouth.

He remembers his first, and only, kiss: a drunk Bellatrix, and in vivid detail; he still feels her coarse dark hair scratching against his face, her lips chapped and dry, her hot, wet tongue pushing against his lips at the thought of kissing.

He killed her for her subservience, though she was normally terribly loyal to him, for daring to kiss him. He finds no pleasure in the thought; at worst, he can only think of people trying to slip him poisons or bite his tongue, and at best, he cannot appreciate the slobber of saliva into his mouth.

But in every bit of sleep he snatches, he dreams of kissing Harry Potter, taking Harry Potter to bed and being _tender _when Voldemort wanted nothing to do with him when it was possible, when he lived.

He puts around Harry's still shoulders one of the many black velvet capes Narcissa Malfoy gave him so many years ago. For his consort, she'd said, and at the time he scoffed to himself, expecting that Narcissa thought that her sister would fill that position (for all that Voldemort deigned to never touch the woman; or anyone, really), but later realizing upon opening her gift that Narcissa, perceptive woman, somehow _knew _about his strange obsession with Harry Potter.

But it isn't an obsession. It isn't.

Harry Potter's face laughs at him in all its death.

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**Author's Note**: This has been sitting in my writing folder for a bit. I'm not sure where to take this, even though I know where it's going, and if it'll be a long or relatively short fic.


	2. Prologue pt II

Author's notes will be always found at the end of the chapter, and there will be an A/N at the end of this chapter – but I want to thank you all for the amazing reception! :)

As for whether or not Voldie is still a snake-face or not and other such questions, I hope this answers some of them!

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any more of Harry Potter than I did the last time I posted, and the last time I posted, I owned nothing at all.

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**Prologue - II**

Under the stir of morning's wings, Voldemort awakes calm and clear-eyed. He is, at once, aware of everything; the sky is rose blue, snakes are slithering in the grass, waiting to eat the birds singing in the trees, and peace flows in his veins like groundwater.

Harry Potter's garden – for it truly is Harry Potter's garden – is tragically beautiful around him. Bathed in the harsh light of the afternoon, it seemed cheerful and eternal – but with morning's roseate hues, he can see that this place too is as mortal as any other.

With a toss of his head, the thoughts fly out of his mind like raindrops from a tiger's fur. Harry Potter himself, the most important focus of his garden, is lovely in the daylight, but here, in the dawn, he is –

Gone.

Harry Potter is gone.

**[ misericordia ]**

"Maybe not Rabastan, then. He _is _too old for our Lacerta, perhaps. But what of Noah Nott, dear? Pansy and Theodore have quite the handsome son." Narcissa Malfoy's high, brisk voice is full of a cold youth. Like immortality, the young lady thinks wearily, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

The young lady – one Lacerta Malfoy, nineteen, fresh-faced and obviously more of a connoisseur of the suddenly very interesting, age old china littering the table of the tearoom than of potential husbands. But not for lack of interest in men, certainly – one had to admit that those teacups were just the most _fascinating _shade of eggshell white.

Lucius Malfoy's regal sniff sounds out clearly from the other side of the table. "I should hope not. Cissy, I have found house elves smarter than Noah Nott. You cannot expect that our lovely granddaughter would marry such a _cretin_."

Lacerta can hear how her grandmother's fingers tighten around the handle of her teacup. "You would not find a monk more chaste."

"Not for lack of trying, I assure you." Her father's high drawl is silvery like her grandparents', but it is round with a more tangible sort of youth, like the chubbiness of a cherub's cheeks. "Perhaps their son is merely… ah, _unable_ to perform."

Before Narcissa can scold her son – "Draco Abraxas Malfoy!" is a common thing ringing out in the halls of this manor – Lacerta barks out an uneasy laugh that turns those three blonde heads to her with an unhealthy celerity. Their gazes are uneasy on her, but it is not her adroit blue eyes, blonde hair or svelte build that alarms them; no, her looks – and only her looks, Scorpius might add here – are befitting of a Malfoy's, like, as Scorpius would definitely say, _their father's and his father's before him and the father that came before that_…

It is her manner they find lacking; and for that, they find the brunette Scorpius preferable.

"Now, Lacerta," Narcissa starts, with a reproving in her voice _that was meant for my father_, Lacerta complains to herself, "a husband will be found for you, but you mustn't hinder our efforts…"

Lacerta chokes the sister laugh that threatens to come out of her at that. Her grandmother is truly a lovely woman, but in her capacity as the Lady Malfoy – for she truly is the Lady Malfoy right here and now – she is too old-fashioned. Why, just last week, she'd seen the youngest Vaisey – what was his name again? – flirting with a boy.

"Yes, grandmother," she returns, voice high with repressed laughter. Narcissa frowns and something flashes behind her eyes before she stands up with a flutter of her floor-length skirt.

"I suppose, then," she says briskly, face cold but voice reluctantly playful, "I shall send out the letters detailing your impending marriage to Noah Nott." She steps out of the tea room, heels tapping haughtily in the corridor.

Warm, golden light floods in through the windows, proof of a lovely afternoon, and there is not a breath breathed.

The silence is broken by Lacerta's wild laughter.

"Lacer – " Lucius begins, but with some difficulty represses his reproach and starts anew, with a line thrown to his son: "Your mother is the epitome of all that is bewildering in a woman."

Draco snorts in a way that his mother would have reprimanded him for. "Mother? Hardly, Father. I have been acquainted with women far less cognizant."

Laughter, fine like how Lacerta's should be. "I had forgotten."

Her father says no more after that, but the words don't have to be spoken for Lacerta to hear them. _Thank Salazar she's run off with her bint. _

Lacerta pinches the bridge of her nose at this silent communiqué that she would not be aware of if she had not been fortunate enough to, at Hogwarts age, catch the tail end of a conversation about a family scandal.

At eleven, Lacerta was not quite the daughter Draco and Astoria Malfoy had hoped for. She was beautiful, certainly, and carried the Malfoy genetics with grace, but as Scorpius would often remind her, that was where the familial resemblance ended. She was not incredibly shrewd, political or cunning; she was, in fact, something of a quiet girl who would prefer to lounge around her room with a book when Scorpius was out at a gala attired in something that undoubtedly cost an immeasurable amount more than her favoured frocks.

And naturally, there was some concern as to her future at Hogwarts – or, more precisely, her Sorting.

For generations, both the Malfoy and Greengrass families had been Sorted into Slytherin. It was an unbroken tradition. And there was certainly worry as to Lacerta's Sorting – but it was not debilitating concern, as no one in the family seriously doubted that the tradition would be broken.

And, lo and behold, when the Hat was plopped on her head, the tradition was broken, and the icy silence that came over the Great Hall wasn't.

Lacerta's Sorting into Ravenclaw provoked outrage in a family where Ravenclaw was a dirty word. There was no comfort to be found in the fact that she was not a Hufflepuff or Gryffindor - that she was not a _Slytherin _was enough to receive a verbal thrashing from Scorpius about honour and how _their father_ had been a Slytherin, as had been _his _father before him and _Great-Grandfather Abraxas _before that, and –

And honestly, Lacerta doesn't really know the family tree past that, no.

Scorpius' rage had been only an echo of their father's, which had been only an echo of his father's, which had only been an echo of Great-Grandfather Abraxas', etc.

But the strongest reaction from the family had not been from Great-Grandfather Abraxas, who had raged incoherently in his silvery, seductive voice – much as Lacerta was loathe to think of her ancestor in such a way – or from Narcissa, whose letters had been uneasily cautious for weeks (as if though Lacerta would suddenly renounce her heritage), but from her mother.

Her mother had always been a kind, if not exasperated, sort of mother. Lacerta remembered her by her sweet eyes, though they were always narrowed in some sort of sadness, and her quiet voice.

But when Lacerta arrived home for the holidays that dreadful first year, she spoke not a word. Frost like the snows falling outside the Manor seemed to settle into new, hard lines of her young face, and she who had previously been a quiet and gentle mother treated her daughter with a new brand of silence: indifference.

It dragged on awkwardly for days. They could charm the Manor against cold drafts, but they could not charm the Manor against her mother, who moved throughout like a chilly wind.

And on Christmas Eve, they awoke to find the Manor clean of every trace of her existence. It was from Rita Skeeter – _Rita Skeeter! _– that they had to learn that Astoria Malfoy, an intelligent, wealthy woman by both high birth and marriage, had run off with her secret lover.

And not just any secret lover, either – it was Millicent Bullstrode, her husband's former Hogwarts classmate, whom all of pureblood society snubbed behind closed doors.

'Millicent Bullstrode!' the Prophet had exclaimed, Skeeter's shock bleeding through the paper.

The Malfoys had been aghast. Lucius was in a rage over the _gall_ of the youth, in particular a youth who had decided to marry into the prestigious Malfoy line. Narcissa was distraught – she was bound to be by both emotion and etiquette – that a woman who they had opened their doors and hearts to would be so contemptibly bold. Draco disdained his wife's choice of elopement partner and Scorpius was appalled with his mother's lack of concern for familial honour.

But Lacerta?

Lacerta had been aghast too – with the possibility that love like that could exist between two women as it did (should've) between her mother and father. And yet, it made sense.

Oh, certainly, Lacerta had always felt some stirring of emotion within her not yet nubile chest at the age when even the prim pureblooded girls squealed obnoxiously in each others' ears about handsome men – but she had always thought it longing for a sister; after all, she did suffer through having the stuffy Scorpius for brother. There was no reason not to be suffocated by the manliness of manly Scorpius, whom the girls fawned over, who gave soapbox speeches and would recite the German wizard Nietzsche's books to a rock if given the opportunity.

If she could credit her mother with one thing, it would be eloping, and giving her the thought that maybe, just _maybe_, what she felt was longing not for a sister, but for a woman's touch.

It is for this reason that this is why Lacerta sometimes considers marrying that dumb-arse Hufflepuff-in-a-snake's-skin Noah Nott (she actually knows of his stupidity firsthand; they were, after all, in the same year.) He might not please her – oh _Merlin _would she even live through him _touching _her? – but he is dumb enough that she could take a woman as a lover and he wouldn't notice.

Would he?

"Lacerta, your lip is not a lady finger."

The gnawing of her lip ceases immediately, but it is chewed up beyond the bounds of propriety. She sighs.

"Sorry, Father. I'll heal it later when I can reach my wand."

A responding sigh leaves her father's lips. "No need." He taps his hawthorn wand to her bottom lip. "Don't do it again. You're lucky as it is that your grandfather didn't see it."

"Yes, Fath – " She stops and blinks. Bewilderment on her Malfoy's face is terribly unbecoming. "… wait, where is Grandfather?"

Her father frowns his mother's frown at her, and Merlin, they really do share too many things among them but before he can respond, her missing grandfather sweeps back into the room.

"Our Lord is summoning us."

**[ misericordia ]**

"Greetings, my faithful." The Dark Lord's baritone has always been lovely, but it is far lovelier now than it had ever seemed before. "Today, I shall bestow a special honour upon one of you…" Cries of excitement sound out from every corner of the room, and normally, the Dark Lord might scowl and throw a Cruciatus out into the crowd, but he only smiles – _smiles! _– congenially. The expression looks very out of place on his serpentine face. "Granger?"

The room falls silent as a witch with unkempt hair dragging along the floor appears at the foot of the dais, facing towards the crowd with eyes as wild as her hair. There is remembrance in some of their eyes, and hatred too; but there is also fear in their hearts, and so they keep silent.

She scans over the crowd with those wild eyes. There is dirt on her face that speaks of perhaps solitary confinement, and how bushy her hair is suggests that it has not been cut in quite some time, but she looks levelheaded all the same.

Lacerta's breath catches in her throat when those brown eyes probe into hers.

_What is that feeling_?

And then the eyes move away, but Lacerta still hasn't regained her breath and _why_? Her father's eyes are beautiful and silvery but those brown, ordinary (probably Muggleborn) eyes seem lovely, somehow…

The girl-woman, Granger - yes, definitely a Muggleborn - sweeps back in front of the dais and kneels in front of the Dark Lord, who glances into her face and back to Lacerta.

"Lacerta Malfoy…" Lacerta loses all the words after that, for all his voice rings in her ears; some sort of numb shock tunnels through her soul as she steps forward, like drifting through water, and prostrates herself.

"My Lord," she tries to say, and she isn't sure if she has got it right because _his power_… there are few words for the power clouding about her, and it makes her throat quiver as she inhales it.

"You shall be given a special honour," he murmurs, and Lacerta wishes she could see that reptilian face, to gauge what sort of expression he is wearing now, but her forehead is almost touching the ground and that power is shuddering through her body.

"Come with me," the girl's voice whispers in her ear. Something pleasant tingles in Lacerta's stomach as she is hauled off the ground and suffers something like vertigo, like Apparating too quickly, but she mastered _that_ years ago…

The girl smiles and Lacerta remembers, through a haze, that she is bound by the grace of the manners she was raised with to give an answer.

"Gladly," she responds, with that pleasant politician's ring she has never been able to master, and finds that the gladness is not for her task, but for that lively twist of knives across her stomach.

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**Author's Note**: Yes, an OC. There will probably be many; it _is _Harry Potter twenty years in the future, after all, and there's a new generation out and about. For those of you who are squeamish about OCs - as I myself am - I can assure you that Lacerta will be used as I would use any other canon character. She does have a purpose, as you'll see in the next chapter. :)

For those of you who missed my note in the beginning - _thank you _for the warm reception. I'm really very flattered! I will be posting other TMR/HP and LV/HP fics, both one shots and multi-chaptered fics, by the way.

The last part of the prologue - the next update - will explain what happened with Voldemort while you met Lacerta, and what Lacerta's task is. And, oh, obviously, what happened to Harry!

If you have any questions, please ask them. The plot might not go quite as you think it will, but there is method to my madness, and I hope you'll stick with me to see my method through.


	3. Prologue pt III

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Harry Potter.

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**Prologue * Part III**

"Greetings, Granger."

Hermione Granger spends most of her days on a near permanent leave from her body, in some serene denial, but she knows that she's a pathetic sight. She spends her time lying like death on her cot, hair rambling long and wild like the roses that climbed the window of her childhood bedroom.

That house seems so far away, now. Everything is distant, theoretical. Hope, light, love – grief, dark, hate.

Azkaban does that to you, she supposes.

For much of her time here she sobbed, thinking of these things, hitting the walls until her skin scratched open, like it did when she was six and learning how to ride a bicycle - but there was no mother who would kiss her forehead, no father who would offer a band aid, and no friend who would help her up, and those sobs turned into silent tears – but there was no one who would look, no one who would offer their shoulder, and those silent tears went to nothing.

Slowly, mind filled with that hard-won nothing – pain thrumming beneath the nothing like groundwater – she lifts her eyes, and can't find it within herself to be shocked.

"Hello, Voldemort." Her vocal chords are rusty, forgotten. She swallows, but no saliva can oil something so unused for so long.

He laughs the gay laugh of one who is meeting up with an old friend. She is too absent to hate him for his newfound jovial spirit. "Defiant to the last, Mudblood?"

"Perhaps," she says, but the cutting edge of his laughter is muffled by a dream, and all the fire in her is dried up. There is not even ash left.

The Dark Lord rests an elbow on the table and cradles his cheek in it, offers her a sharp smirk that highlights all the bony angles of his face. Nothing about the bone structure of his face has changed – but he looks sharper, happier, somehow. This shouldn't come as a surprise – and it doesn't. He won the war, after all. (_What war_? She has never known anything but this, surely.) "Do you remember your dear friend Harry?"

Harry. She doesn't have to think about him, because thinking is pushing things away and paving a path in the space made and there's nothing to push away, and he's always there anyway. She isn't too sure who he was (is) anymore; his spectre lingers on the edges of her peripheral vision, and if she could turn her head she could see him but she's afraid of what might be there.

Sometimes, she sleeps, and sometimes she dreams. And she dreams about a boy like a bolt of lightning, slender and in all ways jagged, with eyes as bright and unfading as life, hair sweet and silent as darkness. Her dreams show nothing more than the little things that belonged to his life – his pretty owl, snow-lovely, and the shackles of his birthright, a prophecy made of blood and bone.

Once, she felt the glimmer of green against her skin, like the sun through the trees, that whisked him away, and the darkness that fell over the earth after that, and woke screaming in the night.

"No."

Voldemort laughs that terrible laugh again. "Very well. I was just curious. I happen to be resurrecting him, and I wanted to know if you would be interested in being his mother, that's all." Hermione's heart freezes. "I'm sure one of my Death Eaters would love to raise him. Narcissa Malfoy, perhaps… Good day, Granger. I… apologise for having wasted your time." He offers a mocking bow of his head.

Something in Hermione flares like lightning and her vision whitens and shakes. "No! No one could ever love him like I do!" She can't find it in herself to be embarrassed for telling the truth even when it becomes apparent that not even Voldemort's smirk had moved and that he'd played her like Harry playing Quidditch. Harry played Quidditch, didn't he?

She remembers, now, some the small things about Harry that she did not forget but did not have the strength to remember – the intensely green shade of his eyes, like Slytherin's colours, and the dimple that popped up in his right cheek when he smiled, and the sound of his voice, like warm tea.

"So, Granger?" His voice is mellifluous, pleasant.

Even after all these years, she still can grasp self-preservation when the instinct comes to her, and she knows that she must not ask why. But… "How are you doing this?"

He scowls. "Don't doubt me, you Mudblood. I am the most powerful wizard alive." Harry is gone, the silence reminds them.

"I know this isn't of your own power, Voldemort. You would have resurrected Harry multiple times over just to kill him again if you could've."

Finally, something truly ugly flashes across his face; the Dark Lord still hates being insignificantly mortal, it seems. "Would you like a taste of the Cruciatus, filthy Mudblood?"

She smiles at him, beatifically, not out of defiance but out of carelessness. "You wouldn't. You need me."

"One Crucio wouldn't hurt," he counters, voice curling in a snarl. "And I do not need you. Angelina Vaisey would be just as happy to raise … Harry." Harry's name sounds awkward on Voldemort's tongue, but there is a warmth there, an impossible warmth, like fire, or light.

Hermione closes her eyes, chewing over his words for a long moment. "No one could be happier to raise Harry than I. But perhaps she would be happy to raise Harry, I will give you that. But you wouldn't have come here, Voldemort, if you did not need me. But you do, because your Death Eaters have no doubt become terribly stupid, and Harry will feel comforted and loved in my presence, although he might never know why. _Do _you ever plan on telling him of his life before this… new life?"

She pries her eyes open to see Voldemort's scowl. Voldemort, however, does not deign to retort, instead responding, "No. He must never know. _Never._"

And staring at him, Hermione realises, "You need him, don't you? He gave you purpose."

The response is immediate – "I need no one. _Cruci_o."

She watches as the yellow spark flies from his hand. It consumes her, for a single moment – but then she can think again, even as thousands of blades impale her, and she does not scream.

Hermione remembers Bellatrix Lestrange, all those pains ago, with madness in her eyes and murder in her heart, and the slow, steady sear of the Cruciatus she cast. That hurt, then – but this is now, and she is not a child anymore. Certainly, this would hurt far more – if she still hurt with her physical body.

The curse ebbs reluctantly; one knife leaves her skin and another dances away, and like this (slowly), she fades back into full conscience. She call feel Voldemort's calm; he was not so angry to begin with, it seems.

Perhaps, after all this time, the Dark Lord has finally come to peace with the truth that he has warred against for all these years.

She simply sits there, eyes closed and mind full of a suddenly tired nothing. She wills her limbs to move, as the Dark Lord's chair scrapes and footfalls signal that he is walking away, but she feels so _tired_.

"Coming, Granger?" The Dark Lord asks, from the open cell door. If she had been the her of so long ago, she would have scowled a bit, at how well he knows that she will not run – how well he knows her love for Harry.

But she is a different girl now – she is a _woman._

"Yes," she responds, surely, and moves to follow the Dark Lord like a dog through the dark tangle of Azkaban. The darkness is oppressive as she presses through it, though Voldemort of course glides forth as she swims through the murky sea of tears and _silence_.

"Do you know where we're going, Mudblood?" he asks. His previously unperturbed voice is touched by irritation.

She doesn't need to think about this – "No."

More irritation. "Do you not care?"

She smiles like candlelight, and suddenly the darkness is easier to cut through. "For Harry, I will go anywhere, and do anything."

**[ misericordia ]**

The Dark Lord's receiving room is done, Hermione thinks, in peculiarly familiar shades of green and black.

She imagines that the rooms of Slytherin would have looked like this – done in lavish silks and brocades and damasks, led into by a long, wide hall with a high ceiling frescoed in the Renaissance style, with priceless artwork smothering all the walls.

The rooms of Slytherin would have been most complete with Salazar himself – or perhaps his scowling descendants. Whatever the reason, the Dark Lord, snake faced, pale skinned and scowling, is indeed what draws his rooms together.

They are quiet as they shuffle in and take places at a circular table, both grudging and a bit unwilling to forget the history between them. They remember this history, strongly, and relegate the decades of bitterness and spilled blood to distance at the tea table.

Fate works in odd ways.

"Tea?" Voldemort asks, pleasantly. To Hermione's amusement, he is pouring himself his own tea.

Hermione nods. "Tea would be nice."

"Pour it yourself, then, Mudblood. You're not an invalid." By the time he has finished speaking, Hermione has grasped the handle of the teapot and warm tea is swirling in her teacup. A little floods out onto the table cloth, which stains Voldemort's forcedly blank face with a sneer. "I take that back. Perhaps you are an invalid… unable to pour your own tea," he mutters, waving his hand to banish the tea stain.

Hermione hums agreeably, mouth occupied with a sip of tea. As soon as she swallows, she retorts, "It was not I who locked me up in Azkaban for only Merlin knows how long." Silence follows her statement. She wonders how hard she will have to work to pull out how long it has been from Voldemort.

"Twenty years," Voldemort says, suddenly. "It has been twenty years."

Inside, she reels, but Hermione only nods calmly and asks, "What is the state of your empire?" _What is the extent of your gains?_

"My empire spans all of Europe, most of Russia, the north of Africa, and a slice of the Middle East." His voice declines in pride as the list descends.

Hermione arches an eyebrow in disbelief, though her heart pounds. _The Muggles. What has become of the Muggles?_ "You are able to rule all of that?"

He scowls at her. "Europe bent to my will easily enough. I have sent the Malfoys to govern Russia. Lucius and his family are fair and just to the Russians, perhaps even fond; thanks to their patronage, the arts flourish in Russia." Hermione nods again, imagining the pretty and pale Malfoys among the pretty and pale Russian wizards. "The north of Africa is managed skillfully by the Vaiseys, who are good rulers, if not cold. And the Notts govern the Middle East, though they have rendered it little more than a brothel."

"The Muggles," Hermione says, finally. "Tell me about the Muggles."

"The Notts own the Muggles that still live. The Malfoys' Russia sometimes buys the best of their Muggles for breeding stock. They do not know we are magical. They believe only that we are exceptionally powerful and wealthy Muggles, so much so that we are capable of upending the world, as we have."

"Oh." Voldemort nods mutely. Hermione wants to cry, but finds that she cannot – so long had she imagined that Voldemort had killed all of them that learning that some live, even if as substandard citizens, is something of a relief to her. She wonders why Voldemort isn't cackling, wonders how her parents died (because it is impossible for her to accept that they might be alive somewhere, slaves to the Notts or brood mares for the Malfoys' Russians.)

Silence follows that, full of sips of tea. Hermione's mind works desperately to reconcile this Voldemort with the one she once knew, but it proves rather impossible.

"It didn't change anything, the way I thought it would," the Dark Lord confesses suddenly, looking into his teacup as if trying to read his fate there. "Their deaths. They would have discovered us eventually, and destroyed us… I feel no remorse for their deaths. Do not think otherwise for a moment, Mudblood… but it was not the great victory I dreamt of since boyhood."

Hermione says nothing – because she knows that to say something right now might be immediate death, Harry or no, and she has nothing to say, and nods when Voldemort changes the topic partly to save face: "Who was that blood traitor Weasley you were so fond of in your Hogwarts years?"

"Ron," Hermione supplies, helpfully, with a hint of old fondness waking across her face in a smile.

"Would you like him to be Harry's father?" Voldemort inquires boredly.

"_What?_" Hermione splutters, and Voldemort grins a snake's grin, presumably at having caught her off guard.

In the next split second, her mind returns to her, and she remembers that Tom Riddle was an orphan. He had been a strong boy, a malicious boy, a clever boy – but he had still been a boy, and probably had dreamed of being loved, of having two parents to care for him.

And even if there is no Tom Riddle anymore, he is still what underlies Voldemort.

"You would even release him from Azkaban if you were to have him as Harry's father. It'd be the perfect little family," Voldemort drawls sarcastically, but Hermione can sense that he truly thinks that Harry being the child of his two dearest friends as the perfect arrangement.

And maybe it is, but for one little thing…

"How are the Weasleys doing?"

Voldemort stares at her for a moment, a question in his eyes before realisation dawns. "The Veela is living with her children in exile somewhere in France. Percy Weasley is a secretary at the Ministry, under a new name."

Hermione's heart clenches. "And the rest? What is the state of the Weasley name?"

"Besides your Ron, dead. The Weasley vaults are impoverished, the name tarnished by spit; I believe the Veela has likely gone into employment at an escort service to maintain a standard of living, under an alias."

She swallows, tries to imagine raising Harry under a Weasley haired father, and subjecting him to that scandal, those whispers. What with the Dark Lord's offer, it is more than likely he will provide shelter, money and protection, and Hermione is skilled enough to cast a good glamour; but they would lead a shady life, at best, always subject to speculation and whispers. Nothing can replace a pre-established reputation.

And what purer repute than that of the Malfoys, especially in Voldemort's antebellum world?

"No. Ron will not have Harry as his son." She tastes bile in her throat at this thought, at the thought of Ron wasting away in Azkaban for what she will do now – but she is sure he would understand, for Harry is already as dear as a son to him, and he would want nothing but the best for their Harry.

Right?

Voldemort stares at her for a moment longer before smirking and nodding in approval. There is still the tension of dislike in his posture – but Harry is the goal here, as it has been made clear, and clearly they can put aside their dislike for him. "Understood. Shall I summon the Malfoys, Vaiseys and Notts, then, for you to choose from?"

Hermione waves her hand negligently. "Forget the Notts. I will not have my son growing up in a land of brothels."

_My son. _The words are sowed somewhere deep in their heart, where they warm, promising to grow into great vines that will rope every last piece of her soul.

**[ misericordia ]**

Lacerta stares into the woman, Granger's, eyes. Among her grandfather's people, these eyes are common eyes, dirty eyes, belonging to those who are parented by one of the Muggle breeding stock. For the Russian wizards have magnificent eyes, like ice and silver, and they are coveted even amongst the magical folk.

But these brown eyes, in Granger's face, are so pleasing, enchanting. They remind her of Rowena Ravenclaw's eyes – masculine with power, feminine with beauty, androgynous in form. She feels that Granger must be searching her soul – but surely that is impossible, for there is no magic that exists to allow wizards to read minds, surely.

"Please, have a seat, _Lacerta_," Granger breathes. Lacerta nearly falls into the nearest seat.

"How did you know my name?" she asks, feebly. Granger only smiles a sharp-edged smile at her and tucks herself composedly into the seat across from her. Lacerta desperately wants to look at their surroundings, but it feels impossible to tear her eyes away from Granger's face – which is not delicately formed as her grandmother Narcissa's is, what with that waterfall of brambles for hair, but there is something of loveliness in it, perhaps even mystique.

Lacerta is a gentle soul, but not a particularly naïve one. Even among Ravenclaws, she is not so young; there is something in the lines of her face and her walk that speaks of wisdom, and having seen it all, further accentuated by her high societal standing.

But Granger is something wild, a complete unknown.

"Our Lord," the enigma in question begins gently, offering Lacerta a plated scone that she accepts jerkily, "has selected us for a great honour. We are to raise a child together."

Lacerta swallows her bite of scone and it goes down the wrong way, lodging itself in her chest like a second heart. Granger continues quietly, "This child is in our Lord's highest esteem. He has chosen us because he knows that we will raise him with gentleness, kindness and grace."

The tense spot in Lacerta's chest relaxes immediately. Her Lord thought she was capable of raising his child!

Granger smiles oddly at her. "No, Lacerta, he isn't our Lord's son. I have – adopted him, and he is… very dear to our Lord. He is the Dark Kingdom's little princeling."

Lacerta nods, though her neck is stiff, because she knows when she should not ask questions – as a child, she would ask her father too many questions about politics and technicalities and the workings of the Dark Lord's empires, and the silence that she received in response had inspired her own silence on the matters.

"My family…" Lacerta begins, and swallows. "My family will shortly betroth me to one from the Notts or the Vaiseys. How am I to raise our Lord's princeling if I am to raise my own children?" _How am I to be a devoted wife to a husband if there is some strange spark in your gaze that twists at my heart?_ Lacerta despairs to herself.

"You won't," Granger says smoothly. "Our Lord will free you of your betrothal, should it come to that."

"Perfect," Lacerta whispers to herself. Granger smiles and stands up.

"Perfect," the wild-haired witch echoes, head twisting to look into one of the many hallways before snapping back to Lacerta. "You will hear from me very shortly, Lacerta." She gives Lacerta one last look at her smile before she ambles down one of the hallways, maybe the way they came.

After a very long moment – or maybe a few hours, Lacerta cannot be sure – Lacerta's father comes rushing in.

"Lacerta!" Draco all but shouts. "Lacerta, what has happened?"

"Nothing, Father," she murmurs, leaning her head back against the cushy chair, and adds to herself, _Except for the rest of my life._

**[ misericordia ]**

On a cliff by a sea far away, lilies float in the sluices of a lake, bobbing gently in time with the descent of the sun and the beat of the waves.

The Dark Lord murmurs a spell quietly, in an infinitely dizzying loop that Hermione cannot wrap her head around for all her bibliomania, voice sometimes slurring and sometimes commanding but constant, as if though he has learned these languageless words by heart.

Nothing else sounds except for an infinite peace.

Hermione, seated on one of the stone edgings of the garden, finds herself nearly asleep; the breeze is soft and cool, petting her overheating forehead to a languid delirium.

Until the wind rends the air.

The wind is so great, so strong it scrabbles at their flesh and streams their cloaks behind them. She wonders if they will die like this, if the immortal Dark Lord will perish from the force of a strong wind.

Her cheeks are too scratched for her to find any sort of amusement in this thought.

"_Fatum_!" the Dark Lord calls, but his voice sounds like the scream of the wind, so distorted it is – and as if he had spoken its language, Fate calms and the wind is gone, though Hermione can still feel the wind coiled into one stale patch of air.

"_My Dark Lord_," Fate responds, low and hissing as if in Parseltongue – and it is clear that it is no earthly language it speaks, but it is impossible for Hermione not to understand it. It is instinctual, a whisper of something all life is born knowing and is ofttimes forgotten. "_You have brought the witness, I see_." Its laughter is hissing, like the ripple of water.

The Dark Lord ambles forth to kneel at the steps of the round pavilion that is built on the protruding edge of the cliff; Hermione follows suit, not so much out of insecurity but because she can _feel _Fate pulling her forth, but unlike the Dark Lord, keeps her eyes on the ground.

When Hermione was a student at Hogwarts, she came across mentions of beings like these, once upon a time. Fate, if not merely mythical – even wizards dos not have ways of knowing this – is spread across the universe in a uniformly thin veneer of omnipresence; to call it forth is to bunch up the fabric of Fate itself, concentrating it to the point where it is visible to the human eye.

"Most high Goddess," Voldemort begins, voice just a notch less imperious than per its norm, "I come to you about Harry Potter."

She laughs, but this laugh is like the brush of wind in Hermione's ear. It is a pleased laugh. "_My people do not forget, Dark Lord. Just as how my Brother Death has not forgotten you._" Her thoughtful hum is the whistle of the breeze. "_Have you truly thought about the agreement I offered you?_"

"Yes, your Highness," the Dark Lord responds immediately, and in her peripheral vision Hermione can see an edge of his cloak bunched up in his white-knuckled fist. "I have thought about your terms very thoroughly, and I have come to accept."

"_Truly?_" One of the shutters of the pavilion roof begins to tap, though Hermione is sure the roof was perfect before. "_Do you know what it means to enter a contract with the powers that govern the universe, my Dark Lord? We do not like to be cheated. As it is, I betray Brother Death this very moment; you are an outlaw in his lands, and all of the universe is his land… If you break your word, I will take everything that you hold dear, and take you to my brother himself._"

"Why?" Hermione asks, before she can stop herself. "Why can you not ensure that Voldemort will not go back on his word, and why would you take the chance?"

She feels the sensation of eyes running over her skin, from her throat to hands and face, but she does not so much as twitch, causing the jovial Fate to laugh again – "_You are very bold, and very true, little girl,_" she says approvingly. Hermione's heart warms – a compliment from _Fate_. _"Ah, in your Dark Lord's world, that might have gotten you killed – but my sweet Harry likes you, I see, and that is why the world has been so cruel and kind to you…_ _Your civilizations are eager to give me the duties of Destiny – but that sister of mine perished many ages ago, and from her, I was born. I am not my calm Sister Destiny; I am but the possibility of many lives. You are independent of me, and I cannot play you as a marionette on a string, as Father would reprimand my sister for doing._" A breath like a sigh. _"Your Dark Lord may very well betray me. It would be inconvenient, at best, to clean up, and return the universe to elegant order; but I, and all of the heavens, adore your Harry, who came to us too soon._"

Hermione's lips move of their own accord: "Thank you, my lady."

_There is something strange, to be addressed by Fate herself, _Hermione thinks, and wills her heart to quiet; the Dark Lord's words are barely audible over its roar.

"Do you mean to tell me, your Highness, that Harry need not have died all those years ago?" Voldemort's voice is trembling, unsure, sprawling a thousand which ways, like Fate herself, who nods.

"_Yes_," she tells Voldemort, gently. "_We did not mean for him to die, all those years ago. And I bend Father's rules now, for you – and if you dishonour your word, you shall not have your soul mate again._"

Hermione's heart freezes in her chest, and so Fate's next words are perfectly audible: "_You know what you must do. My son will come for Harry if you have not burnt your Dark Kingdom, made out of Harry's bones, to a smidgen, by the time he comes of age_."

And Fate sweeps away, twisting into the heavens in a funnel of silver wind, leaving a teary, green-eyed baby where she stood coiled only a moment ago. His forehead is smooth and unmarked.

His cry breaks the silence, and their stupor.

"Harry…"

"_No,_" the wind whispers. "_To you, he is Misericordia._"

Mercy, Hermione realises. Misericordia, mercy.

**[ misericordia ]**

Somewhere in the polluted sprawl of Shanghai, a baby is pushed from his mother's body, covered in so much blood that the new nurse screams. The older nurse's eyes only widen as she wraps him in a blanket and gives him to the strangely handsome Westerner who stands anxiously by the bedside of his ostensible wife.

"Atropos," Noah Nott breathes, possessed by some sudden urge, then shakes his head gently to rid himself of the ridiculous Greek name that must have cropped up in his reading last night. "No. Theo, after my father. Theo Nott."

"Demon child, demon child," the fearful nurse whispers to herself, in Chinese. Her trembling hand logs the time of his birth. _4:44._ "See how he does not cry!"

Indeed, Theo Nott does not cry. His face is a perfect calm. His eyes glint with the green of a streetlight, for one long, eerie moment, a mirror of a child thousands of miles away – before the older nurse's worrying form goes to tend to his mother, blocking the window, and then his father sees that his son's eyes are a beautiful blue, like a winter sky.

"My son," Noah coos.

"Sir, your wife is dying!" the nurse calls to him, in broken, rudimentary English. Noah's eyes widen and fall from his son, who he all but drops in the cradle as he runs over to the dying woman in the bed, who screams of pain and demons.

In the cradle, Theo Nott smiles.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Oh thank goodness I finished this.

Sorry about the relative slowness. I'm prone to frequent bouts of writer's block and laziness, in all honesty, and I've been alternating writing this with editing work. (I edit **B****ad Blood Will Out **by **Rise****oftheConsortium**, which _is _LV/HP!) This chapter is longer than the other two combined, though; I hope that makes up for it!

I'm also writing TMRHP/LVHP one shots with this same agonising slowness. Before I leave to study in Germany for about a month, I'll be able to write either a one shot or a chapter, or maybe, if I'm really lucky, both. And I may have an update ready when I come back from Germany (late August), but I really just don't know, honestly.

This is the end of the prologue! The next chapter will be somewhere in Harry's childhood! c: I haven't yet decided where.

Any feedback is very welcome; I'm rather anxious to know how it is so far, honestly. ^^; And also, I'd like to know if you'd prefer shorter chapters and shorter waits or longer chapters and longer waits - if every chapter is like this, I'll probably update once or twice a month. If every chapter is shorter, I'll probably update thrice or four times a month. Are you guys content with waiting? Do you guys like it? etc etc. XD


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